Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Greek Characters
People sometimes ask how I insert Greek characters into my blog posts. Others probably skip any blog post with Greek characters. At any rate, here is how I do it.
First, I try to find the Greek text in question somewhere on the World Wide Web, so I don't have to type it in by myself. I usually consult Library of Ancient Texts Online, which despite its title is restricted to ancient Greek texts. When I do find a text, I often copy and paste it into a Microsoft Word file on my personal computer, using the Athena font. In this way I have amassed a collection of texts that I can look at without going on the Internet (always a pain with my slow dialup connection).
If I cannot find the text already on the Internet, I type it in myself with the aid of the Unicode Classical Greek Inputter. If you use this tool, be sure to hit the "Greek Letters" button to see all the characters available. Once text is entered with the aid of this tool, I copy and paste the text into Notepad. I always compose my blog posts offline with the minimalist Notepad editor. I also have my own local copy of the Unicode Classical Greek Inputter, to minimize time spent online.
Finally, I surround the Greek characters with some HTML gobbledygook, to help browsers render them properly. At the start of the Greek characters I place this directive:
At any rate, this works for me, and now I can simply refer to this post whenever anyone asks how to enter Greek characters into a blog. It's a cumbersome procedure, but it's the best I've been able to devise.
Newer› ‹Older
First, I try to find the Greek text in question somewhere on the World Wide Web, so I don't have to type it in by myself. I usually consult Library of Ancient Texts Online, which despite its title is restricted to ancient Greek texts. When I do find a text, I often copy and paste it into a Microsoft Word file on my personal computer, using the Athena font. In this way I have amassed a collection of texts that I can look at without going on the Internet (always a pain with my slow dialup connection).
If I cannot find the text already on the Internet, I type it in myself with the aid of the Unicode Classical Greek Inputter. If you use this tool, be sure to hit the "Greek Letters" button to see all the characters available. Once text is entered with the aid of this tool, I copy and paste the text into Notepad. I always compose my blog posts offline with the minimalist Notepad editor. I also have my own local copy of the Unicode Classical Greek Inputter, to minimize time spent online.
Finally, I surround the Greek characters with some HTML gobbledygook, to help browsers render them properly. At the start of the Greek characters I place this directive:
<SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Gentium, Palatino Linotype, Arial Unicode MS">At the end of the Greek characters, I insert:
</SPAN>I have checked the appearance of my Greek characters using both Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser and the Mozilla Firefox browser, and they are rendered properly, without any of those annoying little squares. Whether others can read them, I don't know. I find that I cannot read Greek characters on certain other classics blogs with IE. Perhaps there is some IE option I need to set.
At any rate, this works for me, and now I can simply refer to this post whenever anyone asks how to enter Greek characters into a blog. It's a cumbersome procedure, but it's the best I've been able to devise.
